Combinatorics

In my daily perusal of this here interweb, I stumbled on an interesting, if hack-ish, writing method. It involves making up three lists, entitled Characthers, Goals, and Obstacles, and combining the elements from them randomly. That ought to generate the kernel of a story. For a second, I thought about it, but then realized that it wouldn't work for me, since I'm not big on plot (read: the kind of writing I do will never be published by anyone except those student journals with funny monosyllabic names--but only if you're friends with the editor). The problem with this method is when brainstorming things in isolation, one always falls back on familiar stereotypes: the jock, the loner, the construction worker, the optimist, etc., and similarly stereotypical situations. I don't know if those can be combined to yield anything unique.

Actually, that's probably wrong, but I don't feel like deleting the last paragraph. Why is it wrong? Let's take a look at language. Any language system is capable of producing an unlimited number of utterances. And the English language has only 46 distinct spoken elements from which everything else is built. It looks like I failed to appreciate the power of combinatorics. (Kind of like the awesome power of nature, only with the capacity to grow endlessly.)

So I'm asking for people's ideas on 1) characters, 2) goals and 3) obstacles. The crazier the better, but do try to keep it generalizable. Here's hoping I don't turn into a hack wordsmith who wil lend up producing mountains of pulpy rubble. But who are we kidding?

Consider: "existentialism will not take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. We have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult."